We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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We curse and rage at the BBC here, a lot, but you have to admit that this is a great story.
Even Ghana’s director of tourism may have to admit that Accra has its work cut out competing with other tourist destinations in Africa. Yet just outside the capital, is the suburb of Teshi and it is here that tourists are coming to look at a relatively new tradition – the fantasy coffin makers.
So how did this happen?
The story goes that in the first half of last century one Ata Owoo was well-known for making magnificent chairs to transport the village chief on poles or the shoulders of minions.
When Owoo had finished one particularly elaborate creation, an eagle, a neighbouring chief wanted one too, this time in the shape of a cocoa pod. A major crop in Ghana.
However, the chief next door died before the bean was finished and so it became his coffin.
Then in 1951, the grandmother of one of Owoo’s apprentices died.
She had never been in an aeroplane, so he built her one for her funeral.
And a tradition was born.
The only bit of what might be BBC politically correct boringness that I could detect in this report came a few paragraphs before that last quote, where it said:
Many of their clients want to bury loved ones in something that reflects their trade.
Even if that means being buried in a Coca-Cola bottle.
Even? I suppose if you are the BBC, that is the ultimate horror. But, if being buried in an airplane or a car or a cockerel or a cocoa pod is okay, then what on earth is so wrong with being buried in a Coca-Cola bottle? (Not Diet Coke obviously. That would be stupid.)
Something tells me that in these post-Christian times, this might spread to other parts of the world. Our boring British death industry could certaionly do with a shake-up. What kind of giant object would you like to be buried it?
It is good to read some good news coming out of Africa. True, African people are dying, but they are mostly dying of natural causes and are going out in style.
This is beyond the pale. It is completely insensitive and at a time like this, what idiot would shoot an advertisement for TV that used suicide bombers? Appalling…
…Yeah. But I must confess, I howled with laughter.
He moves amongst us… in a Celica?!
Well, a couple of weeks have gone since the usual festival of excess generally known in these parts as Christmas. When I turn on the television, the radio, or look at the adverts plastered on the walls of the London Underground, it is hard to escape the messages urging us all to lose weight, give up X or Y, go to the gym, blah, blah. Well I do my best to stay in some form of shape by attending a gym fairly regularly, but I must admit there is almost something rather reassuringly predictable about this annual burst of puritanical preaching about the need to turn over a healthy leaf and get into shape. It is like the passing of the seasons.
However, I realise that many of the fine Epicureans who read and write for this blog take a more robust view of these matters and have no time for such asceticism. Well, I have great news. Medical research reveals that you can lose weight by sleeping longer.
That is what I call good news.
Here is another health scare to add to the pile. It seems that Pakistani cricketer Abdul Razzaq has been overdosing on … spinach:
Abdul Razzaq’s mysterious illness, that he suffered during the Melbourne Test, may be related to his curious addiction to spinach. Razzaq suffered a bout of vomiting, dizziness and breathing difficulties on the third morning of the Boxing Day Test and though he batted in the second innings, he hadn’t recovered fully in time for the final game at Sydney.
Razzaq had experienced dizziness and nausea during Pakistan’s tour of New Zealand, in early 2004, and he was put on a diet of spinach by a medical guru in Pakistan. “Somebody told him to have spinach all the time,” Zakir Khan, the Pakistan board’s operation manager, told The Melbourne Age. “So he loves spinach and wherever he goes he says spinach should be part of the diet, in Pakistan particularly. The other team-mates tease him and call him Popeye the Sailor Man.”
It is with such stories at this that I am now consoling myself for this fiasco.
… certain people who need to know.
This was too good to pass on… while browsing the Telegraph pages and stumbling across their Review of 2004, I must have caught one of the billion monkeys at work!
You need to click on the thumbnail and read the image title.
Lt. Charlie William of the British Army survived a 3500 foot fall with minimal damage to his person after his parachute rigging tangled upon exit from the airplane during training over Kenya.
He broke through a corrugated iron roof and gave some Kenyans a bit of a start. I have heard of dropping in for tea unexpectedly, but Charlie seems to have taken it a bit farther than most.
It does not appear to have been reported whether the home owners supplied their guest with a hot cuppa as he awaited assistance.
This is an excellent story. I got to it from here.
A bag of bills stolen from a casino was snapped up by beavers who wove thousands of dollars in soggy currency into the sticks and brush of their dam on a creek in eastern Louisiana.
“They hadn’t torn the bills up. They were still whole,” said Maj. Michael Martin of the St. Helena Parish Sheriff’s Office.
The money was part of $70,000 to $75,000 taken last week from the Lucky Dollar Casino in Greensburg.
Is there not some kind of law saying that you are not allowed to do this kind of thing in the USA? No doubt the beavers have by now appointed a lawyer to represent their interests. An eagle perhaps? Never mind.
Over on Fox News website:
LATEST HEADLINES
– Official: Arafat in Coma
– Arafat Congratulates Bush
Food for thought.
Current blogger enthusiasm of mine Harry Hutton says that this is an interesting story. It is.
Nguyen was discovered trying to enter Hong Kong illegally hiding beneath a truck crossing the border with the mainland. A routine search revealed the Nguyen was carrying two bullets inside his right shoe and a small kitchen knife wrapped in plastic.
Despite the grave threat to public order posed by these weapons, Judge Sweeny contemplated waiving jail time and deporting this dangerous felon … at which point Nguyen became indignant and insisted that he be imprisoned for the maximum possible term.
The defendant explained that he had paid HK$1,500 (US$200) to a snakehead to arrange his illegal entry into the SAR, with the hope of being caught and jailed on immigration and weapons charges. The fee included transportation the cost of the two bullets and a knife, which were provided by the smugglers. Once captured, Nguyen counted on receiving, courtesy of Hong Kong’s taxpayers, room, board and prisoner’s pay of HK$5,600 (US$720), or about US$25 per month, after deducting the snakehead’s fee.
Nguyen considered this a better prospect than those on offer in Vietnam.
Applying the Solomonic wisdom for which he is renowned, His Lordship pondered the situation for a while and then declared that the law is, after all, the law and, moreover, releasing Nguyen wouldn’t be fair to other Vietnamese immigrants – of whom it turns out there are quite a few – currently serving time for trying to cross the border with two bullets and a kitchen knife …
The Washington Times further elucidates:
Hien is the latest in a series of mostly young Vietnamese men arriving in Hong Kong on the “two bullet tour,” for which they pay a fee to a gang in their homeland. The package deal includes transport to mainland China, instructions on how to cross into Hong Kong, plus two bullets and a knife.
The weapons are to ensure that the immigrant will get a long prison sentence. For Hien it means free shelter, food and $50 a month in pay while he is incarcerated. He paid about $200 for the package deal.
Goodness, they must be short of prisoners in Hong Kong. They pay people to attend. Oh well, I suppose this is a nice, simple, market-based solution to the problem of getting udesirables off the streets.
Everyone says how clever those Vietnamese were to defeat the USA in the Vietnam War. But winning was stupid. The clever thing to do would have been to lose.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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